The Homeschool World Series is a week-long baseball tournament that first sorts teams into three competitive divisions, then eventually crowns a national champion, through progressive play. Beginning with Pool play and progressing through a Qualifying round then into bracket play for each Division (see below), team results are compiled to filter down the path to the championship to two finalists, who meet in the World Series Championship on Saturday afternoon to crown the national champion. Details of this protocol are below:
Pool Draw (Sunday)
At the coaches meeting Sun. night, teams competing in the full tournament (not D3-direct) are divided into either 3-team or 4-team pools.
• Top-finishing Division I teams are pre-seeded to their pool slot
• Other returning D1 teams and last year’s D2 winner are offered an option to select an open slot
• All other teams are slotted via random draws (with a redraw if needed to avoid local rival matchups)
Pool Play (Monday)
Each team will play 2 pool games on opening day:
• 3-team pools play a round-robin; 4-team pools play a small bracket.
• Time limit for Mon games: no new inning will start after 2:10h.
• After pool games, we first fill out Division III, which starts play on Tue. Generally*, the bottom team from each pool (sometimes decided via tie-break game) goes to D3; everyone else goes to the Q Round.
* Some years, there are more pools than D3 slots. When that happens, one or more pools will send all their teams to the Q round – which pools/teams are determined by the seeding criteria below (note: this can trump the need for pool tie-breakers if a dividing line emerges on team record).
Qualifying Round (Tuesday)
• The remaining 16 Q teams are divided into two groups and seeded by these criteria (tie-break game results, if any, are excluded from the math for Q-round seeding):
1. team record
2. run differential (capped at +/- 10 runs/gm)
3. head-to-head record
4. runs allowed per defensive inning
5. runs scored per offensive inning
6. coin flip
• Q-round matchups are A1-B8, B1-A8, A2-B7, etc. This seeding only applies to the Q games (Note: We divide into two Q round groups to allow flexibility to minimize matchups of teams from the same pool.)
• Time limits for Q round games: no new inning starts after 2:30h
• Winners of the Q round pairings advance to Division I (the championship bracket); losers drop to Division II. (Note: We have an upset-protection rule: underdog seeds must beat a 2-0 seed twice to claim the D1 berth. The replay game can be Thur. 9a if both teams prefer; otherwise this will be scheduled for Tue. afternoon ~4p.)
Divisional Play (remainder of the week)
• All 3 Divisions are seeded before play begins, (using the seeding criteria above on all of each team’s games); bracket position dictates home (bottom team listed) & away (top team) throughout. (D3-direct teams, if any, are seeded at the bottom of D3 in order of their most recent finish.)
• Time limits for Q round games: no new inning starts after 2:30h except for games noted in the bracket with “no time limit”
• Division III (Tue-Fri, varying # teams): can be a bracket or round-robin-like matchup structure (note: to determine the order of finishes when D3 is a round-robin-like structure, the seeding criteria above will be applied to D3 games only, with HtH record applied ahead of run differential). D3 teams will have 3-4 bracket games. Awards for D3 are after their final games Fri. afternoon. D3 All-Tournament players are divided for an all-star game Sat. morning (free field substitution, all players in batting order).
• Division II (Thur-Sat, 8 teams): 3-game bracket to play out full placement 1-8. Final game is Saturday morning on Stadium Field (live-streamed with commentary), with D2 awards to follow.
• Division I (Thur-Sat, 8 teams): Also a 3-game bracket to play out full placement 1-8. The championship game is held on Stadium Field Sat. afternoon as the final finish of the tournament, with D1 awards ceremony to follow. D1’s Semis and Final are live-streamed with commentary from Stadium Field.